What Does Luke 20:35 Mean?
But those who are weighed worthy to reach that age, and the rising from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:THE KEY
Resurrection opens a new age of life in which the present order of marriage no longer governs.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of life beyond the present age’s conditions: those who rise from the dead do not simply resume the same order of life. Marriage as known here does not define life in the age reached through resurrection.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that resurrection is only this present life restored unchanged.
THE ROOT
αἰῶνος
aiōnos
GROWS FROM
αἰών
aiōn
An age, era, or span of life.
The word translated “world” also means an age or era, marking a changed order of life. Beside resurrection, it points to life belonging to a new age.
ALSO GROWS
aiōnes: Ages; the plural form of “age.”
αἰῶνες
The plural makes clear that the word can mark periods of time, not only a place or world.
aiōnios: Age-related; belonging to an age.
αἰώνιος
This related form carries the same age-language into descriptions of life and things that belong to an age.
ἀναστάσεως
anastaseōs
GROWS FROM
στα-/στη- (sta-/stē-)
To stand or set in place.
The word pictures the dead standing up: resurrection names a rising into life. Here it is joined to “that age,” so the rising marks entry into a changed order of life.
ALSO GROWS
anastasis: A standing up; resurrection.
ἀνάστασις
This is the noun used in the verse, preserving the image of rising to stand.
anistēmi: Rise or stand up.
ἀνίστημι
The related verb makes the action within resurrection visible: the dead rise.
stasis: Standing; a position or state.
στάσις
This branch keeps the root’s sense of standing present beneath the word for resurrection.
THE PATTERN
Resurrection changes life’s order because death no longer defines its horizon.
He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears from all faces, and he will remove the taunt of his people from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.Nor can they die any longer, for they are equal to the messengers, and they are children of God, being children of the rising.But when this decaying thing has clothed itself in what does not decay, and this dying thing in what does not die, then the written word will come to pass, Death has been swallowed into victory.THE THREAD
Nor can they die any longer, for they are equal to the messengers, and they are children of God, being children of the rising.The next verse supplies the condition: they can no longer die. That places the absence of marriage within a wider change in life’s order, one no longer structured by mortality.
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